Remember when director Spike Lee said that in the future we would mark time "Before Obama" and "After Obama"?  That was super smart of him.

As we approach the one year anniversary of Barack Obama's swearing in as the 44th president of the United States it is appropriate that we hear what Dr. Charles Krauthammer thinks of the Commander-in-Chief's performance thus far.

He begins:

What went wrong? A year ago, he was king of the world. Now President Obama's approval rating, according to CBS, has dropped to 46 percent -- and his disapproval rating is the highest ever recorded by Gallup at the beginning of an (elected) president's second year.

A year ago, he was leader of a liberal ascendancy that would last 40 years (James Carville). A year ago, conservatism was dead (Sam Tanenhaus). Now the race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in bluest of blue Massachusetts is surprisingly close, with a virtually unknown state senator bursting on the scene by turning the election into a mini-referendum on Obama and his agenda, most particularly health care reform.

While liberal Democrats in congress and the media scramble to find explanations for their golden boy's plummeting numbers, Krauthammer thinks the dissatisfaction the majority of Americans now have with the president is much more than surface deep.

It's not about style; it's about substance. About which Obama has been admirably candid. This out-of-nowhere, least-known of presidents dropped the veil most dramatically in the single most important political event of 2009, his Feb. 24 first address to Congress. With remarkable political honesty and courage, Obama unveiled the most radical (in American terms) ideological agenda since the New Deal: the fundamental restructuring of three pillars of American society -- health care, education and energy.

Instead of making "fixing the economy" the focus of his presidency. thus far Obama has pursued Euro-socialist goals.  He is failing because all the people who fell for his "I'm a moderate...a new kind of politician" schtick are wising up to the fact that the man was a radical Leftist his entire adult life (and a wildly in-experienced candidate to-boot).

Nothing sums up the president's present predicament better than this:

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.

Read the full column here.

So glad you asked...

The UK's Daily Express printed the top 100 reasons why global climate change, the kind the world's leading proponents of statism and collectivism are discussing in Copenhagen right now, is naturally caused.  The list was put together by The European Foundation, a think-tank located in London.

Here are a few of my favorite things from the list:

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.

11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago

19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.

24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder

Read the rest of the list here.

I realize that it is not a fool-proof, case-closed argument to make, but does it not bother anyone else that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe have all been invited to speak at the Copenhagen conference?  All three men are totalitarian thugs who want nothing more than to harm the United States, especially its economy. Does it send up any warning flare to you man-made global warming believers that these wicked leaders of suppressive regimes would be so happy to help the West all of the sudden?

What is being proposed at the Climate Summit is the massive re-distribution of wealth to poorer countries and higher taxes for Western nations (i.e. America).  It will cripple our economy and hand portions of US sovereignty over to global governing bodies.  Can we afford this right now (or ever)?  Where are American climate change activists citing the Constitution in any of this?

You can't make this stuff up.  From the Telegraph in London:

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."

Oh, and it gets even better!  Fox News reports:

Tons of carbon, no Christmas trees, and Al Gore will be there?  Any takers?

As The Heritage Foundation confirms, the global warming summit in Copenhagen is pathetic and potentially dangerous to U.S. sovereignty.

Compliance with such a treaty would require massive changes to the U.S. economy, and U.N. bodies would decide many of the details of those changes.

Is that the same U.N. that has no room for "religious" things?  I wonder what they would say to the "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights" concept our nation was founded upon?

There are conservatives out there interested in being good stewards of our world without worshiping it, or destroying the world's economy to "fix" problems in that world that aren't even confirmed to exist.

It was recently discovered that many of the key, leading scientists advocating man-made global warming have been for years manipulating data that disagreed with their hypothesis.

"Shockingly", the mainstream media has ignored the story for two weeks. Two weeks!

Comedy Central's The Daily Show with John Stewart has even joined in the coverage of Climategate:

If you haven't seen the interview actor Ed Begley Jr. gave on Fox News last week, here's the stimulating exchange:

Ed Begley Jr., Al Gore, and any other liberal global warming advocate with a pulpit all tell us that "the science is settled."  They tell us to look to the scientists and experts who affirm their climate change worries.

But, as Mark Steyn points out in his latest column, what do we non-experts do when the expers are exposed as frauds?

The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process.

When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The “science” of the CRU dominates the “science” behind the UN’s IPCC, which dominates the “science” behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it’s President Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.

But don’t worry, it’s all “peer-reviewed.”

The problem with this entire global warming/climate change debate is of course that the science is NOT settled, and the current leaders in congress and the White House are pushing catastrophic pieces of legislation and public policies that assume it is.

Steyn also recently wrote this about the upcoming Copenhagen world summit that President Obama will be attending:

I’m always appreciative when a fellow says what he really means. Tim Flannery, the jet-setting doomsaying global warm-monger from down under, was in Ottawa the other day promoting his latest eco-tract, and offered a few thoughts on “Copenhagen”—which is transnational-speak for December’s UN Convention on Climate Change. “We all too often mistake the nature of those negotiations in Copenhagen,” remarked professor Flannery. “We think of them as being concerned with some sort of environmental treaty. That is far from the case. The negotiations now ongoing toward the Copenhagen agreement are in effect diplomacy at the most profound global level. They deal with every aspect of our life and they will influence every aspect of our life, our economy, our society.”

Hold that thought: “They deal with every aspect of our life.” Did you know every aspect of your life was being negotiated at Copenhagen? But in a good way! So no need to worry. After all, we all care about the environment, don’t we? So we ought to do something about it, right? And, since “the environment” isn’t just in your town or county but spreads across the entire planet, we can only really do something at the planetary level.

But what to do? According to paragraph 38 on page 18 of the latest negotiating text, the convention will set up a “government” to manage the “new funds” and the “related facilitative processes.”

The Left has a totalitarian instinct that should alarm any proponent of liberty and free markets.

From The Boston Herald:

In an embarrassing blow to the movement to combat global warming, hackers have posted hundreds of e-mails from a world-renowned British institute that show researchers colluding to exaggerate warming and undermine skeptics.

Like most pet issues of the Left, global warming and climate change have become sacred cows that must be defended at all costs.  Lying, misrepresenting the facts, or personal ad hominen attacks on skeptics are all fair-game tactics to advance the agenda and ultimate goal: global governing bodies to oversee nearly ever aspect of our lives.

Of course the average "Green" American or European is not necessarily thinking about how best to hand over control of their nation's sovereignty to foreign entities and unelected bureaucrats in Copenhagen or Brussels, rest assured your progressive leaders are.

In one leaked e-mail, the research center's director, Phil Jones, writes to colleagues about graphs showing climate statistics over the last millennium. He alludes to a technique used by a fellow scientist to "hide the decline" in recent global temperatures. Some evidence appears to show a halt in a rise of global temperatures from about 1960, but is contradicted by other evidence which appears to show a rise in temperatures is continuing.

Jones wrote that, in compiling new data, he had "just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline," according to a leaked e-mail, which the author confirmed was genuine.

We're using manipulated data, presented to us by ideologically (and financially) driven people, to make decisions about our economy and country.

Plus many of these climate-obsessed people are just plain mean and heartless:

One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:

“In an odd way this is cheering news.”

Mark Steyn, as usual, has written a powerful column that encapsulates the bigger, broader implications of the climate change hysteria (and scam).

How could I pass up posting this story:

Laurie Williams and husband Alan Zabel worked for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for more than 20 years, and they know more about climate change than most politicians. But when the couple released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use cap-and-trade legislation to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.

Williams and Zabel oppose cap and trade -- a controversial government allowance program in which companies are issued emissions limits, or caps, which they can then trade -- as a means to fight climate change.

On their own time, Williams and Zabel made a video expressing these opinions

Not sure what Cap-and-Trade even is (or means)? Arm yourself with the truth here.

You just can't make this stuff up.  Mayor Ray Nagin, who you might remember from such ineptness as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and from such delightful racially-bizarre soundbites as "New Orleans is a chocolate city", went to Cuba to learn how to better prepare the government for a natural disaster.

When Cuba is your standard of excellence, it's time to find a new line of work.

"We understand we may have a lot to learn from the Cubans in terms of disaster preparedness and how they have dealt with hurricanes," spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett said.

Cuba is internationally applauded for exceptional disaster management, according to a news release from Nagin's office.

So according to the "office" of the worst mayor in America, the same one mayor who is looking for some reason to justify a trip to the Communist Caribbean nation, Cuba is "internationally recognized" as being the best in the biz as far as hurricane preparedness is concerned?  Don't even bother showing me where that claim can be substantiated at - you had me at "chocolate city".

This one's for you, Fidel:

I hate snakes.

The next-in-line for the British monarch, Prince Charles, has officially put the world on notice: we haven't much time. Global warming will end things as we know it, according to the Prince of Wales, in 96 months. Pretty precise number if you ask me.

Writing in his column this week, former subject of the British crown Mark Steyn offers some perspective on the dire warnings coming from His Highness.

An excerpt:

Beginning with FDR, wily statists justified the massive expansion of federal power under ever more elastic definitions of the commerce clause. For Obama-era control freaks, the environment and health care are the commerce clause supersized. They establish the pretext for the regulation of everything: If the government is obligated to cure you of illness, it has an interest in preventing you getting ill in the first place – by regulating what you eat, how you live, the choices you make from the moment you get up in the morning.

Likewise, if everything you do impacts “the environment”, then the environment is an all-purpose umbrella for regulating everything you do. It’s the most convenient and romantic justification for what the title of Paul Rahe’s new book rightly identifies as “Soft Despotism”.

The good news is that, at this week’s G8 summit, America’s allies would commit only to the fuzziest and most meaningless of environmental goals. Europe has been hit far harder by the economic downturn. When your unemployment rate is 17 per cent (as in Spain), “unsustainable growth” is no longer your most pressing problem.

The environmental cult is itself a product of what the Prince calls the “Age of Convenience”: it’s what you worry about it when you don’t have to worry about jobs or falling house prices or collapsed retirement accounts. Today, as European prime ministers are beginning to figure out, a strategic goal of making things worse when they’re already worse is a much tougher sell.